The Best Thing Your Father Ever Did For You

In commemoration of Father’s Day, here’s the question: What’s the best thing your father did for you?

I’ll go first.

The best thing my father did is that he really valued and positively reinforced intellectual and academic achievement. At least when it came to me. He really valued it.

I don’t know where this came from. Other guys he knew, his friends and relatives, working class guys, first generation in America guys, they weren’t like him. They encouraged their kids to be into sports or martial arts or whatever. They placed no value on education, and so their kids never left the block, practically. It never dawned on them that they could, or should. It WILL dawn, I’m sure, on THEIR kids. But I was more or less able to skip a generation.